eDonkey throws in the towel

There have been several signs recently that eDonkey would join the legal download market. It seems like this is the road to be taken by commercial clients, which will continue to fall or be taken out by litigation.

eDonkey have now paid the RIAA $30 million USD to avoid litigation. Similarly, the www.edonkey2000.com domain seems to be down. However, this is of little importance if the network is still running. I had an old eDonkey client saved in my computer (for research purposes only of course), I have installed it and the network seems to be working fine. I know that I always repeat this, but a client is not the same as a network. Interestingly, I came across a site called edonkey.com. When you visit the page, you will get a scary message that is not the old site, and not even a mirror. The site brings up an IP address message that reads:

"The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available.
If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law.
Courts around the world -- including the United States Supreme Court --
have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal
downloading.
You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material.
Your IP address is xx.xx.xx.xxx and has been logged.
Respect the music, download legally."

My IP address has been logged? What for? Am I guilty of browsing the web? Will the police knock down my door for looking at a website? It seems like someone wants to scare people, who might that be? According to the Whois database, the "edonkey.com" domain is still registered to Jed McCaleb, who is the lead programmer for Overnet, the owners of eDonkey. So, it is not a spoof site. Has McCaleb given the keys to the RIAA?

What's the large picture? This does not affect the P2P market, mostly because in the days of BitTorrent people are simply downloading entire albums and 500 song collections.